Robinsons Land Corporation (RLC) is optimistic about the prospects of the residential market and plans to launch one more luxury or middle-income condominium worth P5 billion to P12 billion before the end of the year.

This comes after the better-than-expected sales performance of the P21 billion worth of projects the firm launched in the last four months, said RLC Senior Vice President and RLC Residences General Manager John Richard B. Sotelo in an interview at the sidelines of the Economic Journalists Association of the Philippines-San Miguel Corporation Economic Forum 2024.

“We just launched the second tower of Le Pont in Bridgetowne last July 4. If you combine that with Mira, which we just launched in April, we've launched about P21 billion worth of inventory already in the past four months,” he said.

Sotelo added that “the market response has been very good. For Mira, we've launched two towers and the first tower is almost sold out. The second tower, we just opened to the public about two weeks ago.”

He noted that, while they expected market response to be “good, but not this good. Because whatever you say, it's still a high interest rate environment. Inflation is still a bit high, but the response has been quite good.”

In the coming months, Sotelo said they will launch at least one more project which will be worth P8 billion to P12 billion if in the luxury segment or P4 billion to P5 billion if in the middle income segment.

“One of them most likely might be our property in Sierra Valley in the east, in Cainta, Rizal. We've already launched four towers there and we're thinking of launching maybe two to three more because demand has been very good. If we launch another one after that, we'll see. Depends on how the market goes,” he said.

Depending on the performance of the second tower of Le Pont, Sotelo said they can also launch the third tower, since they luxury market is doing much better than the other segments, or they can launch another mid-range project when Mira is finished.

He said about half of their condominium buyers are foreign-based consisting of overseas Filipinos as well as other nationalities while a majority are end-users as against investors.

“Growth from locally-based buyers is also significant… There are those who are moving out of their big houses because the kids have all graduated, gotten married, and they don't see the need for a huge house anymore. For the smaller size units, sales are a little bit more tilted towards investors, but overall project-wise, it's still towards people who want to live there,” said Sotelo.